Xamarin has announced an agreement with SUSE to take over Mono development and has launched a new .NET-based mobile-development platform.

Xamarin, the
company founded to deliver product based on Mono,
has announced the immediate availability of MonoTouch and Mono for Android from
the Xamarin Web store.
Through an
agreement with SUSE, a business unit of The Attachmate Group-which acquired
former Mono owner Novell in April 2011-Xamarin has a broad, perpetual license
to all intellectual property covering Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android and Mono Tools for Visual
Studio.

Xamarin will
also provide technical support to SUSE customers using Mono-based products and
assume stewardship of the Mono open-source project, company officials said.

Xamarin's
Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code,
libraries and tools such as Microsoft's Visual Studio, as well as skills in
.NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for popular
mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhones, iPads
and iPod Touches.
"The
confluence of transformations taking place today in both front-end client
devices and back-end cloud services is expected to lead to healthy growth in
application-development technologies," Al Hilwa, research director for
Application Development Software at IDC, said in a statement. "Application-development
tools and runtimes that support multiple mobile platforms and tap into sizeable
existing developer ecosystems are expected to lead this growth."
"Our mission
is to make it fast, easy and fun to build great mobile apps, whether for
individual consumers or for enterprises," said Nat Friedman, founder and CEO of
Xamarin, in a statement. "Since the introduction of MonoTouch in 2009,
developers have experienced how Mono can streamline mobile-application
development. Xamarin will continue to innovate to deliver incredible
experiences to iOS and Android developers."

Xamarin
engineers are already at work on stability improvements and performance
optimizations, and maintenance updates will be released to customers
imminently. Additionally, a number of major improvements for MonoTouch and
Mono for Android, including support for iOS 5, Xcode 4 and Android Honeycomb,
will be released in the coming months, the company said.
MonoTouch,
Mono for Android and Mono Tools for Visual Studio customers will receive
support and updates directly from Xamarin for the remainder of their
subscription period. Xamarin also introduced a priority support option for
mobile products. Customers who upgrade to MonoTouch Enterprise Priority and
Mono for Android Enterprise Priority will receive access to the priority
support queue and a guaranteed response time.
Xamarin will
also assume stewardship of the Mono, MonoDevelop and Moonlight open-source
projects. In addition, the agreement with SUSE ensures current and future SUSE-formerly
Novell-customers hosting applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension
application server will continue to receive full commercial support for their
platform from SUSE, backed by Xamarin, the company said.
"We are very
pleased to enter into this agreement with Xamarin because our customers deserve
nothing less than the brightest team of experts to provide ongoing maintenance
and support for our commercial Mono products," Nils Brauckmann, president and
general manager of SUSE, said in a statement.
"This
partnership is a triple win-a win for SUSE, a win for Xamarin, but most
importantly, a win for our customers, users and community," Brauckmann added.
"Our partnership ensures SUSE customers continue to get the best support
possible, enables the bright team at Xamarin to achieve success in their
promising new venture, and provides continuity of stewardship for the Mono
open-source community project in the very capable hands of its most passionate
evangelists."

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.